As many/all of you may well know, from last Monday I have been working for YoYo Games in Dundee. As less of you may know, this involved moving out of the East Anglian countryside village I've lived in all my life and taking a 450 mile journey to a room in the middle of the noisy city. As I've said before, it's a huge system shock. But here's a little bit of information on the journey - I'm on limited bandwidth so I can't upload the large number of photos I took during yet but I'll add them later.
I went to bed at 11pm on Saturday 10th with an odd, and unpleasant, feeling. I was laying in a room that, for sixteen years, had been my room. Bar a few vague memories, it was basically where I'd slept, every night excluding sleepovers/holidays/whatever, for as long as I remembered. But, in eight hours, it would effectively be gone from my life. I'm not ashamed to admit I didn't sleep very well/much that night. As my dad was looking to set off early, we left the house at 6am, leaving a sad mother, and, to my complete disdain, three cats that were nowhere to be seen. No goodbye hugs or anything.
After a short while of not doing much, and realising I'd left my phone in my red holdall (buried under all the "cargo") instead of in my to-hand satchel, with a loud, non-automatically-stopping alarm set to go off at 8am, I just thought "meh", took out my iPod, put on the Ochre playlist and fell kinda-asleep.
At 8:20, I woke up to realise we were in a layby - dad had to stretch his legs. I seized the opportunity to get my phone out - despite his not hearing it, it was blaring away. It's only past this point that I was able to take photos (my phone's my camera). A largely uneventful "middle leg" of the journey followed - a second leg-stretch stop, a playlist switch to Owl City, and a level created in Innoquous 4 (for future me's sake, the level I made is called "Navarone").
At this point I really wasn't feeling great. The mixture of the length of the journey (I'm not travel sick but I get really tetchy), and continued thoughts of how this was basically crossing that line where the latest stage in my life is over, made me nearly want to vomit. I drank some water and laid back, though never actually fell asleep again - though I did miss our crossing the England-Scotland border because of it.The shot of relief came from seeing the first road sign with "Perth" on it. Thanks to the golfing tournament, most inns were filled up so instead of getting one in Dundee, we went to the nearest town or whatever it is, Perth. Wasn't a big fan of the inn though. The room was nice, but the bar was really depressing. To my surprise there were dogs running about in it though (I have pictures of one of them, will upload when possible).
So, the Monday morning saw us heading to Dundee. Without much time to find what is now my room of residence, we headed straight to the University of Abertay. My dad came up too to see the office (which would've been hell to find if it had not been for Mike Dailly coming down to lead the way!), and I set up the computer at my station. At 10am, we left to view the room. I accepted it immediately, which I assumed I would, and I headed back to the uni to complete the day of work.
Upon returning, I realised I would be put into physical exercise jeopardy - all of my belongings (of which there's a LOT) had to move from the car to the room. That's seven flights of stairs, and repeated journeys both up and down them to move everything. I'll happily admit I'm big and unfit. So it was murder! It was a relief to get it done though, and an unorthodox way of meeting one of my flatmates (*pant* *pant* "hi..." *pant*).
And that's pretty much it. My dad slept on the floor that night, then left early Tuesday morning. As we both somewhat lack outside emotion, and as I was still asleep, this consisted of the word "bye".
Despite the aforementioned system shock that is beginning to fade but still is there, and the odd pang of sadness (which is nothing more than a pang. Don't get me wrong, I'm not depressed or anything), I don't regret any of it in the slightest. The job itself is huge fun (getting paid to do something I've pretty much been doing for free for seven years? Yes, thanks!), I'm all set up in the room now (having today bought mobile broadband from the 0.04-miles-away Orange store, and a TV licence because I don't watch broadcasts, just play games on it, but whoever conjured up the TV licence concept is a bitch), and things just feel damn good. I'm in regular contact with my parents and friends, and the sheer amount of appreciation I've seen from the Game Maker universe regarding my position with the company is absolutely gratifying. If you're one of those that has commented positively on the Glog entry, Game Maker Blog entry or anywhere else, thank you.
Here's looking forward to life.